


Southern Flash Bastard

by Firelight_and_Rain



Series: Icewind Dale [2]
Category: The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: Gen, Minor Mentions of Prior Domestic Abuse, Modern AU, Not much plot, small town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:05:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8086495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: Someone new comes to Icewind Dale.For a certain value of new.Things don't go as badly as could be expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salamandercity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamandercity/gifts).



> Fair warning: I haven't read these books in, well, awhile.
> 
> Apologies for butchering Bruenor's accent and if I mishandled Mooshie's blindness.
> 
> I was going to dress Jarlaxle like Mirror!Verse Kirk but let's be honest, that's too classy for him.
> 
> This fic contains allusions to Drizzt's background, that I've been trying to sort out in this continuity. Because the drow, as much as I adore them, are ... problematic in the larger scheme of things, I've shifted their wrongdoing entirely onto how Malice ran her household, and as such the background I've cooked up deals with some pretty severe domestic abuse. This fic doesn't go into detail about that, however.

While the miniscule tourist market of Icewind Dale had probably already taken note of the flash black car that had sauntered through town, Ranger Do’Urden’s first notification of the oncoming storm was his landline ringing and DeBrouche’s voice on the other end.

First: “Mooshie,” Drizzt greeted, grin spreading across his face, uncommonly open. 

“Nice to hear from you too, kid. Say there’s some … family trouble with your dad right about now. Think you could drop by? Soon?”

There was the sound of a door slamming, something clattered, and what sounded like Drizzt’s father shouting in Undercommon. Drizzt froze for a moment.

“I’ll be there. Stay safe.” Then he hung up. Guen stared at him, and then darted under his bed. Drizzt considered getting his handgun from his safe. He got his handgun from his safe. (Not that he was legally permitted to shoot anyone with it, not being that kind of government employee).

*

Drizzt pulled up alongside a very fancy, low-slung black car in the driveway of a low log house on the outskirts of a neighbouring town. Given the general area, “neighbouring” was applied loosely. Drizzt’s concern was that the damage had already been done by the time he’d shown up. Now all that was left to him was to locate Zak.

Mooshie opened the door as he approached and turned expectantly towards him. Hooter, his unfortunately named owl, hooted in greeting. 

“Where is he?” Drizzt asked, more terse than he would otherwise be with his former professor. 

“I told him to drive up near the smokehouse. I thought it would help him to be away from everyone for awhile. It was always your favorite tactic.”

Drizzt clapped him on the shoulder Hooter wasn’t perched on, not yet smiling in relief. “Thanks, that might be the thing. Who’s the visitor?”

“No one from your immediate family, sorry for scaring you like that. He is from Menzoberranzan, though. Zak called him ‘Jarlaxle’.”

Drizzt furrowed his brow, remembering. The name evoked no clear memory. “Are they still here?”

“And leave the car I heard with us?” Mooshie chuckled. “Yeah, he’s still here.”

Drizzt steeled himself with a silent prayer and they made their way into the kitchen.

*

In the kitchen, there was a drow with an impressive array of jewelry making what appeared to be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Drizzt’s nose wrinkled. While no connoisseur of fashion, even he thought that the sparkly golden vest and rainbow skinny jeans were a bit much. There was a very large hat set on the kitchen table. The presumed owner of the hat waited until Drizzt and Mooshie had awkwardly collected themselves around the table before turning to them with a polite grin.

“Drizzt. I hoped I’d get to see you.”

In retrospect, the clothing should have been more of a clue than it had been, but the sheer Blatantness of them had somehow kept Drizzt from recognizing their owner. Now that he had, he wished the clothes had done a better job. Jarlaxle wasn’t one of his father’s potential visitors that he was morally obligated to shoot, and so his concern wasn’t for his criminal record, but he could guess why Zak had been so upset. 

“I’ll admit this wasn’t the reception I expect. Sandwich?”

“No thanks,” Drizzt said. “What reception were you expecting, exactly?”

“‘Hi, thanks for saving my son from metaphorical hell, let’s catch up’?”

Drizzt thought it kind of odd that his past lawyer would up and decide to visit his client’s dad in the middle of nowhere with no prior warning, but filed that observation away as relatively unimportant.

“And it completely surprised you that Zak had a … negative reaction to any reminder of Menzoberranzan?”

Mooshie had sat down at the table and was watching their conversation with banked interest. Zaknafien shrugged and widened his cherry-red eyes.

“He’s out, isn’t he? With no little thanks to you, and through you, me.”

Drizzt understood the guy’s point, it was mostly just frustrating. “Well, that’s obviously not what you got.” He sat down across from Mooshie, chair turned and facing towards Jarlaxle. Jarlaxle didn’t reply, just took a bite out of his sandwich.

“Maybe it’s best you leave and wait for him to contact you.”

Jarlaxle swallowed his bite of sandwich and raised both eyebrows.

“Which will, of course, be prompt and prioritized?”

Drizzt smiled thinly, not an expression he was much given to. “I think you know the answer to that.”

Jarlaxle leaned his back against the chipped-top vinyl counter and gusted out a sigh. “Truly, I subject myself to the lion’s den.”

“Well, the meanest lion is out right now, so I’ll guide you back to town.”

“He insists,” Mooshie chipped in.

*

Drizzt accompanied the lawyer back to the fanciest lodging that town had to offer, which was in fact a B&B. To be truthful, he wasn’t sure that Zaknafien was still a lawyer. Bregan De’Aerthe was not the sort of company that was what it appeared to be on the surface, to an extant that went beyond simple tax evasion.

Zaknafien invited him in to the kitchen; Drizzt only went to the foyer.

“I take it you’re settled up here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like it?” Zak was looking at a somehow generic painting of a snowy river hanging on the wall like he’d never seen its like before.

“Yes.”

Drizzt looked around - although there was only a classy foyer to see, it felt representative of something more.

“I assume you have your own job, place, friends?”

“Yes. Are you going somewhere with this?”

Drizzt knew where, but was uncomfortable with the buddy act; Jarlaxle had been an ally of necessity back in Menzoberranzan, nothing more. And he’d had his own reasons, somewhere. Zaknafien grinned at him. (If Drizzt had not been an elf, he might have taken a moment to reflect on how very different intergenerational dynamics were when you could expect to linger in your prime long enough for the next several generations or so to catch up). 

“Just checking up on an old case. I like to feel good about my success rate.”

Drizzt gave another tight smile. “You can feel secure about your batting average. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He left the B&B and drove back out of town to check on his dad. He tried to cheer up on the way. It didn’t work.

*

Drizzt fervently hoped that that would be the last he’d hear about Jarlaxle of Bregan De’Aerthe for a good long while. That was not to be.

The next incident was heralded by Mayor Silverymoon calling his landline.

“Ranger Do’Urden?”

Drizzt had returned to lying flat on his back on his couch after picking up the phone. He’d been that way before Alustriel called, and hadn’t felt like abandoning a position so wonderfully suited to self-pity. “Mayor Silvermoon?” Drizzt asked, voice dropping, which he would swear was unintentional. “Yes. Someone is asking for a tour around the Vale. He says that he’s interested in real estate.”

Drizzt was about to buck up, bite the bullet and offer himself for a duty that he had absolutely no interest in, when an even less pleasant thought occurred to him. “If I may ask, who is this inquisitive citizen?”

“Well, I’m not sure that he’s a citizen exactly,” the mayor said, sounding amused.

“He’s … not?”

“Well, I didn’t ask. But there aren’t so very many of your species topside, and he’s not so well integrated as yourself or your father.”

Drizzt considered groaning to make his displeasure known, but settled for glaring at the ceiling. 

“I take it you know him?” the mayor asked, as delicately as ever.

“Let’s call him a family friend,” Drizzt said. “And I take it he’s asked for me, specifically,” Drizzt asked glumly.

“Yes. Do you know why?”

“I think he’s trying to bond.”

“Should I send in Regis?”

“Please.”

*

“Elf.”

Drizzt silently opened the door for his best friend (bar Guen, maybe). “I’m surprised you made the drive,” Drizzt said, going to the fridge for one of the craft beers Wulfgar and Bruenor and Catti were in the habit of buying him and that he really only kept around to give back to them. He still wasn’t sure if the whole thing was a joke.

Bruenor accepted the beer with pleased stoicism.

“Yeah, well, someone had to do it. It’s not like you were making the drive to see me.”

Drizzt smiled indulgently. “You were busy.”

“Ah’m always busy. Don’t mean I’m busy with anything important.”

“Excuse me for not imposing on your time.”

Bruenor smiled, but it turned a little sad around the beard. “With Cat and Wulf gone, you’d be the only one.”

Drizzt considered getting himself a bottle of beer. “Book club meeting?” he offered.

Bruenor shrugged. “Actually, ah wanted to talk about that … new customer of Regis’. Family of yours?”

“No.” Drizzt considered his status as Bruenor’s family. “But I did know him.”

“He a dick?”

“Yes, but he wasn’t - he was my lawyer.”

“Doesn’t seem like he did a very good job.”

Drizzt shrugged, not wanting to pursue the topic. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“Guess so. So we’re not intentionally infesting his new house with termites?”

Drizzt smiled slyly.

*

Icewind Dale had its own news station, barely. Regis had been its mastermind at its inception, but it had since devolved into Kemp ideologically shouting at his fellow citizens through the mouthpieces of flannel-clad fishermen while everyone else tried to tell him to shut up through their own flannel-clad fishermen.

Drizzt didn’t watch the news. His friends informed him that the news watched him religiously, to the tune of a lot of “no comment”s and motherly advice about life in a subarctic region region, but nothing sufficiently scandalous.

He was told by Bruenor, over an insistent landline, when to turn his salvaged box TV on and from the static (which reminded him, soothingly, of a blizzard) to the news, which was one of three accessible stations in Icewind Dale.

The first such highlighted news “story” was about the real estate market in the Dale. There was no actual real estate market in Icewind Dale, because it was a miserably shitty place to live for anyone with any sense. The “story” was about a foreign investor who’d moved in and bought a cottage on the lakefront. The narration betrayed a pathetic desperation for tourist money, any tourist money, and also a wariness about the encroachment of more drow into the Dale.

The second “story” followed the first and described the end result of TP-ing the cottage. The narration sounded mildly amused, mildly disappointed, and not at all surprised. Drizzt had to agree.

He wasn’t sure if Bruenor expected him to get some vindictive pleasure out of this, even after all that time.

*

Drizzt wasn’t surprised, exactly, when Jarlaxle threw a house party. Bruenor and Regis trundled up his driveway in Bruenor’s truck to deliver his invitation in person; Drizzt thought, secretly, that the cream stationery that Jarlaxle had used was ostentatious and fucking ridiculous. His expression delivered his opinion on the ostentation well enough.

“Considering cultural differences, I would have thought that you’d want to stay out of the blast radius,” Drizzt said.

“A solid idea,” Bruenor said with a glance at Regis.

“About that,” Regis said, inviting himself to look through Drizzt’s kitchen and make disapproving noises at random phenomena. “Kemp is going to be there.”

Drizzt considered this. “Why?”

“Probably hoping to embarrass another drow who’s wandered into his reach,” Regis said. “Granted, I have no idea how. It didn’t work on you.”

“This is going to be a disaster,” Drizzt said to no one in particular. 

“Wilting wallflower, is he?” Bruenor asked.

“Hardly. No one who attends that party is ever going to be the same.”

“Really? Because I’m going to have to work with Kemp when it’s over.” Regis ducked back around a cabinet and gave Drizzt his best version of puppy dog eyes. They were very effective.

“Quit yer complaining and remember that you signed up for that position,” Bruenor said, but it was too late.

*

They all went to the house party together - Drizzt, for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of, but that he suspected had to do with the minimization of collateral damage he’d end up feeling responsible for, Regis because it was his job, and Bruenor to provide moral support (probably for his own entertainment, or to gouge out Jarlaxle’s eyes with the punch bowl scoop if he was too much of a dick to Drizzt - whichever became relevant). 

They had to use Drizzt’s truck, as ugly as it was, because he couldn’t fit in Regis or Bruenor’s vehicles comfortably for obvious reasons. (The unicorn sticker that Catti had slapped on the bumper was still there, much faded by weather, but unremoved - Drizzt insisted that he liked it for aesthetic reasons).

Drizzt walked in behind his friends, which did shit all to shield him. There weren’t many people there, but it was still daunting - a side effect of making a secondary career out of avoiding people. A woman he didn’t recognize was sitting on a couch he didn’t recognize next to Mayor Alustriel. Alustriel straightened up and smiled at Drizzt. Drizzt smiled back, spontaneously.

“I didn’t expect you to show up,” she said.

“I didn’t expect to either.”

Bruenor gave Drizzt a smug look, which he did not notice.

“Where is Kemp?”

Alustriel glanced towards what Drizzt supposed was the kitchen. “I think he’s challenged our guest to a drinking contest.”

“Has it progressed to fists?”

“Not that I saw.”

The TV was showing some sort of upbeat reality program about selling houses.

“I’ll go … police the situation.”

Alustriel chuckled. “I think Jarlaxle can take care of himself, but go ahead.”

*

“Oh, Do’Urden. Thank Tempus.”

“Cassius.”

He was slumped at a very nice granite countertop, unlikely to be drunk, probably just exhausted by his fellow councilman. Kemp was glaring at Jarlaxle over the countertop. Jarlaxle was contemplating Kemp over the countertop. The drow was wearing some kind of cropped sweater. Drizzt hadn’t been aware that anyone made those; maybe Jarlaxle had made it for himself.

“Can I?” Drizzt asked, looking at the punchbowl. He didn’t want anyone getting alcohol poisoning - the roundabout assassination of a councilman wasn’t something he could just let happen, no matter what he thought of the councilman in question - but punchbowls were mysterious things.

“Want in on the challenge?” Kemp asked. He sounded excited by the prospect. Drizzt had to acknowledge that he had a point; when it came to holding liquor, a drow simply didn’t have as much space to put it as an ornery human man.

“Just trying it,” Drizzt said innocently as Jarlaxle slid him a wine glass. Drizzt wouldn’t be surprised if all he had were wine glasses.

It wasn’t alcoholic.

Drizzt took several more sips to be sure, then drained the glass.

“You were having a drinking contest?” he asked.

Kemp gave Jarlaxle the stink eye. “Yes. He’s doing better than I expected …”

Drizzt considered his options, and then just smiled to himself. “Well, gentlemen, I think the drink is too stiff for me. I’ll go enjoy the living room.”

Cassius gave him a knowing look on his way out.

*

Jarlaxle gained a legendary reputation that day, one that didn’t involve physical violence or criminal ties, and had started to find points of interest that weren’t the Do’Urden family.

Drizzt thought that all that was a good start.


End file.
